The same risk does not exist. The risk from the 1976 swine flu was something like one in 100,000. Subsequent studies on flu vaccines, which now are produced much differently, have shown no link. I believe on study in Canada showed a one in a million risk. It’s hard to measure because catching the flu, getting surgery or incurring any kind of infection can put you at slight risk for Guillain-Barre.
The current risk of this vaccine is not the same as back in 1976.
Please do your research.

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/vaccination/gbs_qa.htm
I did. My statement was that you can’t blame parents for being concerned and protective of their children. You repond in a dismissive manner and without citation.
Do you seriously suggest that there are not times in which medications develope side effects that we do not expect or do not know about at the time? Do you suggest that medications have not been pulled off the market by the FDA due to being more harmful that helpful?
Please post a citation to your difinative statement that: “The same risk does not exist.” I haven’t seen anywhere, including the Centers for Disease Control, making such a blanket statement. Nor can I imagine them making a blanket statement that there are no other unknown side effects.
My point is I can’t blame parents for being concerned.

This article simplifies the arguments of his detractors, but explains his argument in detail. This is not fair.
My son’s autism was not caused by vaccines that he received, it was caused by vaccines that I received over the course of 30 years.
The doctor says that vaccines do not cause autism, but the evidence disagrees with his conclusion. The evidence is that vaccines change your DNA, just as much as smoking, for example. Those DNA changes can cause autism in your children.
If the doctor disagrees with that statement, then he is wrong.

There is no evidence whatsover that vaccine changes someone’s DNA and causes their children to have autism. There isn’t one study that draws that conclusion. I’ve never even heard of such a study being done. If you know of one, please post it.
The overwhelimg evidence is that there is no link between vaccine and autism. After the preservative blamed for autism was taken out of vaccinces, it did not alter the rate of autism.

There are hundreds of studies that tell you that heavy metals damage the DNA. The national institute for health has never reached any other conclusion (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15695327, but really, see anywhere.)
The flu vaccine contains mercury and also squalene. It does damage DNA. Just becuase it doesn’t instantly give you autism does not mean your children are safe.
Once it is known that a child is autistic, then there is a very high chance that vaccines will make his symptoms worse. If you read medical studies carefully, you will see that every medical study of vaccines and autism demonstrates that pre-existing symptoms are aggravated. Doctors dismiss this because they claim the effects are temporary. If you were to ask the parents, though, they will tell you that the word “temporary” can mean anything from a few days to many years.
Imagine your son waking up screaming every 20 minutes all night long. Would you put up with two months of that to protect him from a mild flu? How about 12 years?
Imagine your son learns to deal with his bad behaviors, struggles every day to hold down a job, and then one day gets married. Imagine telling him that his children will be autistic because you insisted on protecting him from a mild flu.

There are trace levels of heavy metals in everything. Oysters. Fish. Milk. Breast milk. Fish like tuna and swordfish are locaded with mercury.
There is no mercury in the nasal flu vaccine, and there are injected pediatric doses that don’t contain it. The study you have linked to simply says at a high enough level, mercury causes damage. That’s not new. Everything is toxic at some level. The word vaccine isn’t even mentioned in this report.
Experts in autism bemoan this obsession with vaccines because it detracts from research into the real causes.

This month, when hospitals were already forcing their staff to get vaccines, only one out of every ten of the available vaccines were nasal mist. The mercury-free doses were even less than that. The squalene-free doses were nonexistent.
What I object to is the attitude that I am putting someone else’s children at risk by not rushing down to get a mercury-filled vaccine injected into my son. If someone wants to protect their children, then they are welcome to get their children vaccinated. I made a decision to vaccinate myself and not my son, based on sound scientific evidence. No one is able to refute that evidence, so instead they say things like “tuna contains mercury too”. Agreed: My child does not get tuna either.
According to the FDA, the vaccines currently available for my son contain so much mercury that I would be liable for a $10,000 fine if I were to pour it in the sewer. Yet they consider it safe to inject directly into the bloodstream of a 3-year-old. Mercury is fat soluble, by the way, so small doses can build up in your body gradually. Extremely small doses can cause damage to your DNA. I only listed one article, but there are 12 more at http://www.autismboulder.org/pdf/ScienceSummary.pdf . You will not win this argument. Every study that has ever been done on mercury and DNA indicate that mercury causes damage. There are not any studies that have ever come to the opposite conclusion.
I also disagree that research on heavy metals detracts from other scientific research. You pointed out yourself that other factors also damage DNA. Remember that the DNA research into protein synthesis and regulation is the current state-of-the-art in autism research. It has long been known that smoking and sun exposure damage the DNA. Scientists also agree that heavy metal exposure and pesticides do the same, as do many other toxins. Scientists will also tell you that the damage would not show up in us, though. The damage would show in our children.
The problem is; this theory implies that my son’s autism is partially the result of all the sun, secondhand smoke, and pesticides that I soaked up many years ago. Not to mention the fact that I have had at least one vaccine a year for 30 years.
Doctors are constantly telling me that my son’s vaccines did not cause his autism. This is true, but it does not answer my question. My question was whether the vaccines that I got over the course of 30 years caused my son’s autism.
There is very little evidence, but the evidence that exists indicates that vaccines change your DNA, just as much as smoking, for example. Those DNA changes can cause autism in your children. The only question is whether they do. Until the question is answered, I choose not to inject mercury into my son.
We know for a fact that mercury does not cause “instant autism”. But that is not the question we asked. The question we asked was about the second and third generation after the original vaccines.
If a doctor tells you that he knows for a fact that mercury is completely unrelated to autism, even in the second generation, then he is wrong. Autism is poorly understood, and any doctor who claims to understand the causes is incorrect.

Mike Thomas, among others, oversimplifies my arguments and misunderstands his own. You stated: “The overwhelimg evidence is that there is no link between vaccine and autism.” This is simply incorrect. The overwhelming evidence is that vaccines do not CAUSE autism in a single generation. This is not the same as saying there is no link.
In fact, the only large scale study conducted by the CDC on the subject came to mixed conclusions. Congressman Dave Weldon pointed out in 2003 that the most widely quoted CDC study had, in fact, revealed significant problems with mercury in vaccines, and the results were suppressed. Weldon believes that there is a conflict of interest at the CDC because vaccine manufacturers have billions of dollars at stake and numerous seats at the table when research is being analyzed. (http://www.thinktwice.com/fraud.htm)
Congressman Weldon will be the first to tell you that vaccines save lives. But vaccine manufacturers would have you believe there are no adverse consequences at all. This is clearly not true. Vaccines are a calculated risk: Odds are they will do more good than harm. But individuals should be educated and informed, not misled and manipulated.
Also, most vaccines do not contain mercury or squalene. These chemicals were removed from MMR and DPT vaccines because they were found to be dangerous. Yet they persist in flu vaccines.
I would love the opportunity to write a guest piece on the subject. There are people on both sides of the debate who have dug in their heels so far that no room is left for rational debate. Many parents of autistic children have a purely emotional view of vaccines. (This is fair: A vaccine that helps 99% of the people but injures that other 1% can hardly count on anything more than about 99% support.)
But the other side of the debate has gotten just as irrational. Instead of trying to refute the research by Dr. Jacquelyn McCandless, they go after Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy. Instead of trying to figure out why there is so much anecdotal evidence, they group it all together and ignore it.
I have met a boy whose parents told me that he never said more than one word at a time for the first 13 years of his life. When they started a program to gradually remove heavy metals from his body; he started talking less than a week later. His speech is full of odd word usage, and his sentences are still short, but they are clearly sentences. Doctors have no idea why he responded to this treatment, and don’t seem to care.
Instead of spending time telling me that Jenny McCarthy is a nitwit, why not spend some time trying to figure out why some children respond to chelation and others do not.
I have read the research, and I believe there is fire beneath all that smoke; It may be a small fire, but certainly a fire. If the CDC comes clean and admits they suppressed some valuable evidence, then I will be happy to engage in a rational debate. But if they are going to lie about research, and then try to use emotional arguments and accuse me of putting other children at risk, then they should be prepared for parents like me to dismiss their opinions.
The vaccine manufacturers are hiding behind legal immunity, and they are sniping at parents who honestly question why legal immunity is even needed. The vaccine manufacturers tell us that the legal question is settled, but I can tell you it is not. If evidence surfaces that the CDC knew all along that vaccines cause autism in the second and third generation, parents will not be seeking liability, we will be seeking criminal charges. No judge in America would uphold a law specifically designed to protect people who are hurting children.
Right now, parents of autistic children disagree on the subject of vaccines. Politicians and drug manufacturers are smug in the knowledge that a random group of overstressed parents can’t stop the flow of cash to vaccine makers.
But imagine the tornado of public opinion if it turns out that the CDC and drug manufacturers ignored the scientific research simply to save themselves the cost of refrigeration. I am guessing there would be trials. Imagine if Congress had granted cigarette manufacturers immunity from liability, and multiply that by a hundred. There are very few things that upset people so much that it would cause us to vote out every single member of Congress, but this is one of them.
And it won’t stop just because Paul Offit isn’t on our side.

Every major medical group in the world, including the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control, the American Academy of Pediatrics — and on and on and on – have found no like to vaccines and autism. Countless studies here and abroad have verified that.
You can choose to believe what you choose to believe.
Good luck.